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Day Five

Well… day four was a wash (as far as “officially registered word count) goes. I got some stuff written out longhand, but not more than a couple hundred words or so. Still, this afternoon has (thus far) been productive, typing up what I did yesterday and adding another twelve hundred words to my running total so far (and its only mid afternoon).

I’m going to take a little break… have some dinner… play some Earthdawn (it’s our Sunday night game). I hope to get a couple more pages cranked out before midnight tonight. We’ll see how that goes.

Stay tuned… more updates will be coming!

Day Three

Not much progress made today. In fact… all 570 words of my progress today was made in the wee hours of the morning after my last post.

So I’m a little off the pace at the moment… chores to do, prep for our Mage LARP (which went well, thanks for asking)… it’s late, I have to work tomorrow, and I’m going to give the writing a pass for now.

I will be taking a notebook to work tomorrow to get some longhand work done. I know where I’m going next… I just need to find the time to get it down.

I have posted the next installment of the story over at my NaNo blog, if you’re interested.

That’s all for now!

NaNoWriMo Day Two

A decent second day… I’m probably going to go for another hour or so, but since it’s close to midnight I thought I’d post an update and get the official “second day” tally down.

Because I didn’t upload my word count until early this morning, my progress report doesn’t have anything from day one… but a very respectable 2800+ words for day two. Slightly behind target, I guess, but still not bad.

I’ve slapped together a quick-and-simple blog for the story itself. You can find it here, under the working title “The Stars of Lochost.” This title may change as time goes by… but titles aren’t really important during NaNoWriMo, word count is! So I’m going to bring this post to an end and get back to work… twenty-seven days (and about 47,000 words) to go!

NaNoWriMo Day One

I’ve just finished my first day of NaNoWriMo. I had hoped to get all the way through the first scene of my book… but I didn’t quite do it. I got started a little bit later than I had planned this evening, and the scene is going to be a bit longer than I had thought (which is good, since I’m looking for word count.)

I was planning on posting the story as it grew, and I will, but not right now. As you can see from the time stamp, it’s late, and I need to get to bed. I don’t want to burn myself out too quickly, and I have hit my target for today.

That’s all for now… I have tomorrow and Friday off, and I’m hoping to get more words cranked out in that time.

Here’s hoping!

Jazzed

It’s late, I am beat, and I am turning in very shortly… but I had to come on and make a quick post. We had our Mage: The Awakening LARP tonight, and it went really well.

I have to say that, at the moment, I am in a total creative groove right now. I’m not sure what started it, but I’ve got a bunch of ideas and I’m itching to get at them. I haven’t felt this energized in a while… and tonight’s game helped push that further.

I’d like to thank everybody that came out for the game, and I hope that the next round of gamemasterly evil meets with your approval.

The cleaning continues

I spent a couple more hours cleaning my office last night… I very nearly have it back! All that’s left is to move the file folders with my organized bank statements, credit card bills, and the like to the file cabinets upstairs (instead of the living room floor space they currently occupy), shred a whole bunch of *old* documents, and I’ll be ready for the Great Culling.

It’s also two weeks to the beginning of NaNoWriMo. Ive been flopping back and forth between a couple of different ideas… and I should probably settle on one, so that I can do a little bit of planning and outlining before the month starts. Here are my rough ideas (in order of fleshiness):

* A cross-worlds story a la Chronicles of Narnia, but with a Shakespearean slant (basically, a troupe of actors steps into a real-life MacBeth/Hamlet/Lear scenario).
* A more traditional fantasy tale about a brother and sister divided by war, and their respective efforts to get back to each other.
* A novel set in the Earthdawn universe, with an eye toward publsihing it through RedBrick.

Regardless, I’m thinking about blogging the novel as I work on it… to help keep me honest.

One final thing… if you haven’t encountered it yet, check out Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio. It’s a great Victorian-era pulp steampunk romp. Add it to your “webcomics to read” list!

What a day…

It’s been a long day. I spent most of it cleaning/organizing my office. I haven’t been able to use it for a couple of years, because rather than keep the space organized, I would just dump stuff in there with the intent of getting to it later.

Well, later finally arrived, and I spent this afternoon sorting and organizing old bank statements, credit card bills, and the like. Not exactly my idea of a good time, but I put my computer’s music playlist on shuffle and set to work.

Now, instead of a disorganized morass of papers, I have a dozen or so neatly organized file folders, and a grocery bag full of old stuff to be shredded. Now all I need to do is keep them that way, and I can use my office as an office again, instead of as a glorified storage closet.

This is part of the preparation for two things — NaNoWriMo in November and my plans for what I’ve been calling “The Great Culling”. You may have seen the pictures I posted of my RPG collection… well, there are a significant number of those books that I haven’t pulled off the shelf in years, and will probably never play. I also need some extra money, so I’m going to be going through the collection and sorting it into 3 categories:

(1) Things I need.
(2) Things I probably don’t need… but I really like them and don’t want to get rid of them just yet.
(3) Things I definately don’t need, and can dump to clear up shelf space and get a little extra money.

If you’re interested in acquiring any pieces from my collection, watch this space. When The Great Culling is done, I will post an announcement here, and accept offers. Anything on the list that doesn’t get snagged right off will go up on ebay to find a good home.

One final update — Mary had an appointment with her OB on Monday, and we had another set of utrasound pictures taken. This set was espectially cool, because they took the data from the ultrasound and rendered it out into a 3-D real-time image. Here’s a look at the “standard” ultrasound:

Ultrasound from October 9, 2006

Here are some of the 3-D renders. The tech can set the ‘depth’ of the render at any point, and so you can get some different views. The first one is set at a “standard” depth — you can see the left arm and the outside of the head, but the features are obscured by the haze of amniotic fluid. The second is set a little deeper — the left arm is partly cut off (you can sort of see the left hand up against the head), and a little bit of the skin is removed from the abdomen, revealing the early formation of the ribs. The facial features (such as they are at this stage of development) are clearer, though.

Ultrasound from October 9, 2006 Ultrasound from October 9, 2006 Ultrasound from October 9, 2006

In the third image, the depth is set down even further — we are actually ignoring the top of the skin and skull (in relation to how we’re looking, at any rate) and are looking at the developing brain. The kid is looking away from us, so we don’t get a look at his (or her) face.

This last one is the best of the lot, I think. Nice profile of the face, and a good view of the right hand.

Ultrasounds from October 9, 2006

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for further updates!

NaNoWriMo

Here it is… October. I think I only made one or two posts in September? Once again, my blogging skills leave a bit to be desired.

Anyhow. National Novel Writing Month starts on November 1st — the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

I’m thinking about taking par this year. I talk about writing alot, but I haven’t really written much of anything in years. This, I think, is my opportunity to try and knuckle down.

More information on this plan as it develops. I just thought I’d put it out there now.

More pictures of the peanut

Just a quick update here… Mary had another ultrasound on Sept 1, just before Labor Day. For the edification of those who care, here are the images from that visit.

Second ultrasound picture #1 Second ultrasound picture #2
Second ultrasound picture #3 Second ultrasound picture #4

The measurement (as of that visit) was about 11mm — a little less than half an inch. Everything is going fine as of this posting.

That’s all for now… it’s been a long day, and I’lm looking to go to bed early.

Pluggin’ Away

Two quick things I want to plug here. First off is a new webcomic I’ve come across called “No Pink Ponies”. It’s only recently started, and you can find it here:

http://www.nopinkponies.com/

The other pluggable item is a new single from “Weird Al” Yankovic entitled Don’t Download This Song! You can listen to it (and catch a snazzy little animated video for it) here:

http://www.dontdownloadthissong.com/

According to the site, the new album Straight Outta Lynnwood is out September 26.

That is all. Carry on.